Religion Dispatches
…rofessor Rashid should not attack the Community for assuming the mantle of American Muslim leadership when other American Muslims have remained timid or silent on these issues. Second, Professor Rashid contends that the American Muslim community is represented by a diverse range of organizations, and it is this very diversity that makes it difficult for any one Muslim organization to speak with any authority. Professor Rashid is correct to point o…
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…y seeks to force itself upon the rest of us—whom they view as lost sinners, heretics, non-believers, witches, and infidels. Evangelical theopolitics isn’t new. Praise-singing crusaders aren’t new. What is new is that they may well be winning. ### This essay first appeared on The Cottage and is republished with the generous permission of the author….
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…ction to the White House and the role of polling was to greatly expand the number of Americans who were evangelicals. How is that possible that a poll could do that? George Gallup, Jr. was now in charge of religious polling at the Gallup Organization. George Jr. was a born-again Episcopalian himself, and had started doing more polls about Evangelicals. When Jimmy Carter came along, journalists were asking themselves, “What does it mean to be a bor…
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…broke with the New Deal coalition, but it would be easy to overstate their number. Even those who worried about the New Deal’s racial implications were overwhelmingly supportive of Roosevelt’s policies well into the 1940s. In recent years we have been muddling through a “Great Recession” in which many of the problems and the arguments of the 1930s have been resurfacing. What can this history teach us about our present political-economic situation?…
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…hing you had to leave out? Early on I decided to focus intently on a small number of newspapers, rather than try to tackle the whole range of black newspapers published before the Civil War. I’m still happy with this decision to go for depth over breadth, but it means that there are lots of papers that I didn’t have a chance to include. I would have really liked to spend some time with Frederick Douglass’ Paper, or the Christian Recorder, but happ…
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…e 2009. I have finally made peace with it. 9/11 is a difficult day for all Americans, and for me as a New Yorker it is one laden with very personal and painful memories. Eid is a joyous day for all Muslims, marking the end of Ramadan, our holy month of fasting, serving others, and seeking God’s forgiveness and blessings; but it is by no means a raucous celebration. Eid is a day of remembrance where we come together with family, friends, and commun…
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…re extensive literatures on enslaved African Muslims and twentieth century American Black Muslim movements, my next book explores new ground by documenting the prevalence of Orientalist representations of Muslims, Arabs, and Moors in nineteenth century American popular culture in forms such as sheet music, circus performances, minstrelsy and magic. African Americans not only consumed these images, but they helped to create them. For some, Oriental…
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…center driven by real estate, banking, and the stock market. Yes of course New York is the American center of theater, fine art and publishing; but even with these folks the talk is of money, financing, advances, sales figures. The pandemic will change a lot of things about New York City, but not its obsession with money. Of course, I can think of a few complicating factors. The outgoing president is the Emperor of BS, and he is, or was, a New Yor…
Read More…be killed,” another reads. Germany: Lesbian teacher rehired under bishops’ new employment policy New Ways Ministry reports on the case of a German teacher who is getting her teaching job back after the implementation of a new policy by German bishops that is more welcoming of LGBT church workers: A German educator fired for her plans to marry a woman will return to her position as head of a Bavarian kindergarten, aided by a new church employment p…
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…ore available to commodification.” The melding of Eastern spirituality and American capitalism isn’t new. As the popularity of yoga demonstrates, adapted ritual practices can sell. (Much the same could be said, too, about many martial arts). Spiritual practices can also be harnessed for corporate ends. “American capitalism has had a long and durable romance with Eastern spirituality,” Michelle Goldberg wrote last year on newyorker.com. “For well o…
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